Fifth grade should be part of elementary school

Fifth-grade students fall right between the two groups and sometimes, it's hard to know which group to place them with.

At a recent retreat for Lafayette Parish School Board members and staff members, the question of whether to let fifth-grade classes remain on middle school campuses or be placed on elementary school campuses was a topic of discussion.

The purpose of the retreat was to look at programs and policies that may become part of the school systems "turnaround" program to transform the district into an "A" district.

The matter of where fifth-graders belong will be studied in more depth in January, when a task force formed to make recommendations for the turnaround meets again.

And then, there is Milton Elementary, which serves students from kindergarten through eighth grade. It's the parish's only K-eight school.

It's often difficult to figure out where fifth-graders, who are usually 10 or 11 years old, really fit in. But it would seem that for the majority of them, elementary school is a better fit.

While they are rapidly approaching that difficult time in every child's life, most of them aren't in full-blown adolescence, as most middle schoolers are.

For the most part, fifth-graders are mentally, emotionally, experientially and physically not as developmentally advanced as the older middle-school kids.

They don't have as much in common with them as they might with the elementary school kids, for whom they can serve as role models.

That age and experience gap is even greater when there are overage students on a middle school campus. These are students who have been held back more than once because of academic or discipline problems. Some over-age middle school students can be as old as 15 or 16.

But there is an interesting twist when you're talking about fifth-graders being in an environment that includes kindergarten through eighth grade.

"Some data show that K-through-8 kids perform better," said Angela Morrison, a spokesperson for LPSS.

That makes sense, in a way.

Instead of being the youngest in a group they don't quite fit into, these kids are simply in the middle, with lots of younger children there who they can relate to, if they aren't quite ready yet to identify with the older group.

And there are other factors, Morrison said. Instead of having to go from elementary to middle to high school, students have to make the transition to a new school twice, instead of three times.

There is a stronger sense of connection to the schools, a stronger sense of community.

"It's a dropout prevention strategy," Morrison said. "The largest percentage of dropouts is in the middle school transition," Morrison said.

But absent the choice for a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade setting, it would appear that remaining with their elementary school would be the best choice for fifth-graders.

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Fifth grade should be part of elementary school

They're not little kids, but they're not exactly preteens, either.Fifth-grade students fall right between the two groups and sometimes, it's hard to know which group to place them with.At a recent